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Contents lists

T. E. Lawrence to D. G. Hogarth

[Karachi]

7.4.27

Azrak, Jefer, Disi, W.Itm, and all sorts of places: from some old
papers which I have been destroying. I don't know whose they are.
Some armoured car or aeroplane fellow's: perhaps Junor's, for they
include a burned view of his aeroplane, and of its crash, and a photo,
of Murphy's wrecked Turk machine. Stick 'em in the cupboard with the
other Arabian stuff. You will remember that some day, if we both come
together, we are going to Graingerise a copy of The Seven Pillars
(which I begin to suspect will remain the longest work upon the Arab
Revolt) with prints of all the pertinent photographs of the
expeditions.

Mrs. Shaw sent me some reviews of
Revolt in the Desert, including
your verdict, for which best thanks. I'm glad you have said so much
about it, now and last year. I only hope people won't boom Revolt
into a best seller. It isn't so very good, though I'm confident that
it's good enough to pay off my debt to the bank.

I hope the Trustees will consult me before selling the film
rights, if offers come to them. Films can be so very bad.

Do you ever see Philby? If so, tell him it was very good of him
to cry me up in the Observer. I feel guilty always in his eyes:
guilty of being an unscientific traveller. That's why I never offered
to lend him The Seven Pillars. Please also assure him that no subscriber was asked to accept any condition, explicit or implicit,
with his copy: though I did diddle old Shorter into refusing one, by
asking for a pledge that he shouldn't write any of his muck about it!
Did I ever show you that Shorter correspondence? It was priceless. I
don't think I ever was ruder, or successfully ruder, in all my life!
He asked for it, so soul-satisfyingly.

My books in Arabia were the
Morte: Aristophanes (I read all the Peace, very gratefully,
and without much technical trouble) and The
Oxford Book of English Verse. Not so fastidious after all!

Your last paragraph puzzled me. In
The Seven Pillars, the last
section, the advance on Damascus, reads very weak... as though I
was exhausted, as perhaps I was, with all the preceding chapters. I
tried twice to punch it up, a bit, into life, and eventually abandoned
it as hopeless: and I put it all, disproportionately, into Revolt in
the Desert, to give it a chance by itself, with all the best bits of
the early sections cut out. The better writing is in
the Arabia, Yarmuk raid, and winter war sections: and the very best of
all perhaps, is Book 1, the first ride up to Feisal: in which good
bricks are made without straw.

However it doesn't matter. It is all over
and done with.

T.E.S.

Source:

DG 512-513

Checked:

dn/

Last revised:

9 February 2006

T. E. Lawrence chronology

﻿

1888 16 August: born
at Tremadoc, Wales

1896-1907: City of Oxford High School for Boys

1907-9: Jesus College, Oxford, B.A., 1st Class Hons, 1909

1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British
Museum's excavations at Carchemish

1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo

1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt

1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference

1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office

1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF

1923 January: discharged from the RAF

1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps

1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant

1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah

1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven
Pillars, published

1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey

1929-33: stationed at Plymouth

1931: started working on RAF boats

1932: his translation of the Odyssey published

1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe

1935 February: retired from the RAF

1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May

1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset

﻿

This T. E. Lawrence Studies website is edited and maintained by
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